Threads from Henry's Web

Author: henry

  • Causes, Excuses, Reasons, and Justifications

    I’m giving in to my tendency to write about broad principles rather than specific situations, though of course I’ll have to use a few specific situations as examples. I’ve heard this issue raised numerous times in numerous different situations. It can be stated this way: Does finding causes and reasons for an event or an action constitute justifying it or providing an excuse for it?

    We often encounter this in court cases with certain types of “justification” argument. Does the fact that a defendant was abused as a child provide justification for his or her criminal actions as an adult? It is very likely that the way someone grew up contributed to criminal activity later, but that doesn’t necessarily make it a good excuse.

    In politics I’ve heard this frequently in connection with the Palestinian situation. If anyone starts talking about reasons that Palestinians might be angry, there’s a quick negative reaction from supporters of Israel. Somehow we’re supposed to imagine that Palestinians are naturally evil and want to blow as many Israelis up as possible. If we find any reason for their anger and alienation, then we are justifying acts of terrorism. (Note that I refer here to folks in the United States, elsewhere in the world Israel is not so popular.)

    Similarly when we talk about the current war on terror, any discussion of reasons why people might hate us, why they might be angry, and why some might go so far as to try to kill us. But the fact is that terrorists are not born terrorists; they become terrorists. This involves the education to hate that can occur in their culture, but it also results from their experiences or those of folks close to them. Like it or not, if you blow up people’s houses and kill some of them, a certain number will become angry enough to be driven to be more radical than they are.

    The fear, of course, is that if we find reasons why terrorists have become what they are we will diminish the sense of them being evil, and provide excuses for their actions. This would in turn result in appeasement rather than vigorous suppression. But if we ignore the very real reasons why people become terrorists, we can quite easily design methods of responding to them that tend to produce more terrorists rather than less.

    I do believe that there are people who have become evil beyond hope of our doing anything to change them, so they must be dealt with forcefully. At the same time there are many people who have been pushed over the edge, and many sympathizers whose position has not been settled.

    That’s why any anti-terrorism policy needs to include both a diplomatic and a military option, and any anti-crime policy needs to deal both with enforcement and with the causes of crime. It’s easier to think of just one or the other; to propose that we simply hunt down every terrorist and invade and occupy every nation that supports terrorism. Similarly we can propose solely a diplomatic solution. Most unfortunately it seems to be easier to propose the violent solution than the diplomatic one.

    Similarly it’s easier to propose draconian penalties than to deal with education, economic issues, and the quality of enforcement (equipment, sufficient number of officers, and so forth) that might prevent crime before it occurs.

    If we use an examination of the causes to provide an excuse for evil actions, then there will be a significant danger. But we must examine the causes, and we must correct those that we are able, or we risk multiplying our problems as we try to solve them.

  • John 18:1-4 – Getting Christological Perspective

    If you’re acquainted with the synoptic gospels, in reading John 18:1-4 you may notice some substantial differences. What’s missing here is the time of tarrying and waiting, the prayer, any sort of agony or question about what Jesus was about to go through is gone. Verse 4 puts the different feel of the text into words when it says, “Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him . . .” (TNIV).

    So which is it? Was Jesus confident and in control, finally giving up his own life, or did he pray that the cup might pass from him? One could try to reconcile these by saying that he knew, but he also wished to avoid, but I think it’s impossible to read the passion story in the gospel of John without seeing a different picture of Jesus than the synoptics portray, always assuming that one lets John speak for himself, and each of the synoptic writers for himself.

    But I’m going to suggest that nonetheless “which is it?” is the wrong question. This is where we get into mystery. Orthodox christology holds that Jesus is fully human and fully divine. Human logic balks at the combination. When we think about Jesus we generally are either thinking of him as more human or more divine. Lacking an infinite perspective, we have to see something finite. In our minds 2 * fully (or 2 * 100%) is just too much to see at once.

    So we have different pictures in the gospels, because being written by finite people (inspired by God) and in finite human language, they can only give us part of the perspective at once. In John we see the divinity of Jesus in the foreground. In Luke especially (22:39-51) we see a much more human Jesus. Again, “which is it?” is the wrong question to ask. It is both, which is how the doctrine developed.

    When we see all the Biblical perspectives on Jesus we realize that he cannot be simply one thing. Various christological heresies have tried to make some one perspective be the perspective. But we can be sure that any explanation that makes too much sense, that makes it too simple to understand isn’t adequate to the task.

    I’m reminded also of God’s work in a person’s life. Who am I? Am I Henry Neufeld, defined by my history, my education, my actions in the past? Or am I a human being in the process of sanctification by the Holy Spirit, with Christ dwelling in me? I assure you that I don’t present the kind of challenge that Jesus, fully human and fully divine, does. But I do present contradictions, and I do look different when you look at me from the perspective of the work God is doing on me.

    In Hebrews 11 we have person after person who was called and used by God. The presentation of these people is invariably more positive than what you find in the Hebrew scriptures. Sarah is filled with faith, rather than laughter. Moses doesn’t fear the wrath of the king, even though he flees. I think Hebrews 11 looks at these people in terms of what God is doing in them, not who they were on their own.

    We can’t have a God’s eye view. God has the infinite expression. But by looking from these various angles that scripture provides, we two can see just a little of what God sees.

  • Holy Week Devotions

    I’m sticking largely with the Good Friday lectionary this week for the devotionals I’m writing for my wife’s list. The first two are Watching and Waiting and Restoring Broken Things. They will continue each week day.

  • It Looks Like Obama is Going to Educate

    Yesterday in my first post on RedBlueChristian.com, I referred to a conversation with my wife in which she suggested that Barack Obama has an exceptional opportunity to educate and help America grow.

    I just read an article on MSNBC.com talking about his proposed speech in Philadelphia on the topic. If he does this right, it could be great.

    This paragraph struck me as precisely what I was thinking:

    The fact is Wright is the man who brought Obama to Christ. He is the one who married him and Michelle Robinson. He is the one who baptized their children. He is the one who helped supply a sense of community rootedness and black identity that Obama, by his own account, says he so yearned for as the credentialed but confused son of a racially mixed marriage.

    Absolutely! And those are good things that Dr. Wright supplied. Obama certainly should not deny the great things he got from his church. He needs to explain to white America the value that he gained there, and also why he is moving forward to a new approach, without making light of or putting his church in a negative light. It will be interesting to see how well he does that.

    I’m delighted that he is going to try. His ability to communicate is a strong positive characteristic; one of the reasons I’m supporting him. He needs to display that ability in full measure in this speech.

    Fineman, in the article already cited, notes:

    But Obama can’t — and should not — try to deny that the church and the Rev. Wright are the essence of who he is. Obama has said as much, in memorable prose, in his two books. And there is no need to jettison him entirely.

    Fineman is absolutely right. Those who are getting shrill about these sermon snippets would like him to deny and toss Dr. Wright out with the garbage, but that is not the right thing to do even though it may seem the way to make the problem go away. I hope that in this speech we will all learn something about how people grow, what they need, and how we can deepen our understanding of one another–even of one another’s anger.

  • Another Jeremiah

    I recalled Micaiah before I thought of Jeremiah in this case, even though Dr. Jeremiah Wright shares the great prophet’s name. Micaiah is the prophet of who never prophesied anything good about Ahab (1 Kings 22). Jeremiah, on the other hand, was definitely an anti-patriot. Very little that he said was appreciated by the hierarchy of Judah, and he certainly was not an advocate of dialogue.

    Which brings me to Barack Obama’s former pastor, who doesn’t speak in terms of dialogue, and doesn’t sound like a great American patriot. But leaving aside message for a moment, he definitely does have the tone of a prophet. Prophets tend to have an abrasive personality, or else they are driven to abrasiveness by the messages they are called upon to deliver. I remember one church at which I taught on the gift of prophecy. After I had discussed rebuke as an element of prophecy, one of the members told me that they didn’t do rebuke at that church; they preferred encouragement. All I can say is that if you prefer encouragement, you probably won’t like the tradition of the Hebrew prophets.

    (more…)

  • A Repentance Speech Event

    A friend sent me a link to this post on Language Log which discusses public repentance as a speech event. If you tag some spiritual implications onto the linguistic analysis, it adds some interest as well!

  • Spectrum of Views on Historical Reading of the Gospels

    I often present a standard spectrum of views on reading the gospels as history, one which extends from the conservative, or even fundamentalist side, which claims that all details of any type must be historical, to the opposite radical conclusion which claims that the gospels are entirely fiction. Most discussion goes on somewhere between that, with many conservatives allowing for minor differences in what they regard as eyewitness reports, and few scholars claiming that there is no historical basis in the gospels.

    But there is another spectrum I’d like to point out this Easter season: Just how important is history to our faith? These two spectra may not be completely independent, but in my experience they can be. I have encountered people who believe pretty much whatever the gospels say is historical, but don’t regard that as terribly important. On the other hand there are folks who think that the “Jesus of faith” is the key, no matter how one takes the historical evidence.

    I personally tend to give the gospels the benefit of the doubt, though I have no need to reconcile issues like the number of demoniacs who met Jesus on the other side of the sea, or the numbers of denials and cock crowings, or who precisely showed up when on Easter morning. It is important to me to regard these as unimportant, but I’m not bothered too much if you want to reconcile them. I’m not disturbed, on the other hand, if the feeding of the 5,000 and the 4,000 is regarded as one event told multiple times with variations, or two distinct events.

    In the modern western world, we think first of facts and history, and whether this is all true, in the sense that it happened as described. But that can lead us to try to read the gospel to answer a list of questions that the gospel writers weren’t trying to answer. What I’d recommend, and what I try to do for myself on a regular basis, is to simply read the each gospel on its own and try to see just what the writer was trying to pretend. Then I can turn to history, or whatever other issues are involved. But my faith is profoundly based on their story and their testimony and the way that connects to mine.

    Chronology can be fun, in fact I enjoy it, but it is not the root of my faith.

  • Home-Grown Insurgents?

    This is funny. And thought provoking.

  • Reading the Passion Narratives

    I was reading from Darrell Bock’s book Jesus According to Scripture, and I was struck by a footnote. I’ve been reading from the passion narrative in Matthew, because it is the lectionary selection for this year, but I like to read Bock’s notes because he points out the similarities and differences between the various accounts.

    In his note on the last supper (p. 359n54) he comments that:

    . . . To the extent that an interconnected tradition makes these points about the event, whether explicitly or implicitly, the order of the Gospels becomes less relevant, beca7use the basic symbolism of the event is there in all these elements in all versions.

    I’m not writing to critique Bock’s approach, though he is somewhat more conservative than I am. But I’d like to suggest a couple of things about reading. First, no single gospel story makes a train wreck of the passion accounts, i.e. the message is still there. Second, each gospel account has a unique emphasis, which we should watch.

    We tend to read these stories for history, which is why reconstructions of the sequence of events, telling us precisely how many cock crowings there were, or when Peter made each denial, or clarifying just who went to the tomb and when they did it. That sort of thing has a certain interest. But when we’re looking at those details and compiling a full story from our multiple sources, we can easily be missing the message of the gospels.

    As a believer, I like to read these stories simply for the impact, the symbolism, or might I say, the “mythical” element. “Myth” has a bad name, but one element of myth is that the story has a meaning beyond the narrated facts. A myth explains how one’s world hangs together and why. What I mean by looking at the mythical elements is to read the story for its broader meaning in salvation history. Change the questions. Go asking, “How can this story impact my life and the life of my church?”

    I have no problem with reading for history, but such reading is only a small part of truly absorbing the text and letting God work on your life through what you read. I would recommend reading or hearing these texts read aloud. I know the passion narratives are long, but the gospels spend all that time on them because they are important. Read them slowly. Absorb the symbolism. Let God speak.

    It’s much more important than sorting out the crowing cocks and denying disciple!

  • Troy Britain Has a New Blog

    I’ve been acquainted with Troy since back in early Religion Forum days. He’s had a web presence for some time, but now he has finally created a blog, Playing Chess with Pigeons (don’t ask me). Welcome to the blogosphere, Troy!

    I suspect he’ll talk about antievolution stuff quite a bit, which will be good. He already has a good post on transitional fossils.

    HT: Dispatches, where Ed Brayton was also part of the RF crowd in the good old days.